The headline to this post may surprise many Washingtonians who are still thawing out from the cold and historically snowy winter. However, not only does a new NASA draft analysis predict that 2010 will likely set a new global temperature record, but it also projects that it is "virtually certain" that a new 12-month running mean global temperature record will occur sometime this year.

Wait a second, you may say. That doesn't make sense, given the relentless cold thus far in 2010 (at least until the past two weeks), not only in Washington, but also throughout Europe and parts of Asia.

So, where is this forecast coming from?

First, as I detailed last week, the winter of 2009-2010 wasn't actually very cold from a global perspective. In fact, according to NOAA, the past winter (Dec.-Feb.) was the fifth warmest on record on a global basis.

Second, NASA's projection, which is in the form of a lengthy and technical paper that is publicly available here, is based on a combination of recent observations and historical evidence. Part of the projection rests on the continued presence of a moderate El Niño, which is a natural climate event characterized by unusually warm water in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. El Niño has long been known to boost average global temperatures by warming the ocean and atmosphere. The all-time record warm year of 1998 (depending on whose statistics you cite) was a year that featured a strong El Niño, for example.

On the other hand, La Niña, which is marked by anomalously cool waters in the equatorial tropical Pacific, can lead to cooler global temperatures.

NASA's temperature projection is based in part on the knowledge that global surface temperatures tend to lag behind El Niño by about four months. Since El Niño has continued to remain at a moderate strength, and global average temperatures are already running significantly warmer than average, it follows that there is a window of another several months of extra warming within which to set a new record.

You can think of El Niño as adding another few logs on a preexisting fire. Only in this analogy, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels are also adding their own kindling at the same time.

The NASA analysis argues that 12-month running mean global temperatures provide a better indication of shorter-term climate trends when compared to calendar years, for example, and may do a better job for the public of separating climate trends from weather fluctuations. The running means, the NASA scientists say, show that global average temperatures have continued rising since 1998, and have not flattened out as some have claimed.

"From a climate standpoint there is nothing special about the time of year at which the calendar begins," they state. "The 12-month running mean temperature anomaly provides an improved measure of the strength and duration of El Ninos, La Ninas, and the response to volcanic eruptions. In contrast, use of the calendar year... can be misleading, because one El Nino may coincide well with a calendar year while another is split between two calendar years."

However, the calendar year remains more relevant to our everyday lives, considering that most of us don't keep 12-month running means on our desks.

For the calendar year of 2010, NASA's analysis states, "it is likely that the 2010 global surface temperature in the GISS analysis also will be a record for the period of instrumental data." However, the analysis notes that a new record "might not occur if El Nino conditions deteriorate rapidly by mid-2010 into La Nina conditions."

Despite its technical nature, the NASA analysis makes for a fascinating read, since it provides a glimpse into how leading climate scientists are reacting to the relentless criticisms that have been directed at them in recent months, stemming from the so-called "climategate" scandal and continuing through recent controversies concerning a few errors found in the otherwise authoritative reports of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"One lesson we have learned is that our approach of making our global data analysis immediately and routinely available, with data use by ourselves and scientific colleagues helping to reveal potential flaws of the input data, has a practical disadvantage: it allows any data flaws to be interpreted as machinations," the scientists state. "The data are too useful for scientific studies not to be made available promptly, however, so we will continue to do that on a monthly basis. Thus we have made the process as transparent as possible..."

The draft NASA analysis was written by James Hansen, a prominent climate scientist who heads up NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and three other researchers.

For more details on the study's findings, you may want to read Douglas Fischer's thorough coverage at The Daily Climate. Also, Joe Romm's post at Climate Progress has more of Hansen's thoughts on some of the more malicious recent efforts to gain unauthorized access to NASA's climate data.

The views expressed here are the author's alone and do not represent any position of the Washington Post, its news staff or the Capital Weather Gang.

I would also like to reference Anthony Watts article which sheds light on how these figures are produced and how the choice of normalization can affect the impact that these figures make upon their audience.

It has happened before...in Western Wisconsin during the Dust Bowl era!

The year 1936 featured the coldest winter and the hottest summer. It got as low as -33 in February and as high as 111 in July in Eau Claire. The all time high for Wisconsin is 114 degrees at Wisconsin Dells in July, 1936. The actual low temperature for Eau Claire is -35 in Jan., 1951, another cold winter. However the February, 1936 cold wave was remarkable as it lasted nearly the whole month.

Landlocked stations are known for temperature extremes. Perhaps the biggest extreme for an inhabited area is the "cold pole" of Yakutia in Siberia, where swings of 180 degrees from -90 in the winter to 90 or greater in the summer occur in Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon. This is a regular feature of the "taiga" or boreal forest [spruce/moose] biome which covers Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and Scandinavia. Further north the tundra is not so extreme in temperature but high desiccating winds at the high latitudes combine with lack of significant warm periods to limit tree growth at the "tree line".

Good post on your part, Bombo47. I see you took some time out from dancing to do some good research. I'd like to add, myself, that during the Dust Bowl years, it got even hotter than the 111 at Eau Claire, WI. Parts of ND and SD, in 1934 and 1936, recorded summer afternoon temps of over 120 degrees...heat that is normally reserved only for Death Valley, CA, and parts of southern AZ.

Our winter here in DC was historically snowy, but it wasn't historically cold. It was colder than average for a while, but not extremely so. No cold temperature records were set in our area this winter.

The NASA paper has a "chilling" factiod on that point:

Daily weather fluctuations are even much larger than global mean warming. Yet it is already possible for an astute observer to detect the effect of global warming in daily data by comparing the frequency of days with record warm temperature to days with record cold temperature. The number of days with record high temperature now exceed the number of days with record cold by about a two to one ratio [Meehl et al., 2009].

How can these forecasts be given any credibility while the data manipulation [on which far too many of these predictions relies ]is under scrutiny?
Those doing proper field work can provide sediment samples etc showing how climate has behaved over centuries ,while those playing with computer models can only offer predictions.Predictions which have failed and which continue to do so.

I find the 12-month running-mean to be very important. I hope NASA can continue to successfully defend for this presentation of information. The globe and its two hemispheres have many fluctuations that occur (and create "noise") during a 12 month calendar year.

@spgass1: That's right, but Blacksburg isn't in the DC region/metro area. Also the temperature measurements for Blacksburg only go back to the 1950s, while the DC record goes back to the 19th century, so they're not really comparable.

seraphina2: The NASA analysis notes that during the extremely cold winters of the mid-late 1970s, when the Arctic Oscillation was very negative (but not nearly as negative as during this past winter), temperatures were significantly colder than they were this past winter.

--begin quote--
We are basically a modeling group and were forced into rudimentary analysis of global observed data in the 70's and early 80's since nobody else was doing that job at the time. Now we happily combine NCDC's and Hadley Center's data to get what we need to evaluate our model results.
--end quote--

MMCarHelp... Steele, ND hit 121 as I recall. I believe one or two places in South Dakota hit 120. In Canada, Yellow Grass and Estevan, Saskatchewan each recorded 117 degrees in the 1936 heat wave [in the days before Canada switched to Celsius].

Sounds as though Mr. Q is trying to establish a reputation as our resident "tea-party" climate expert. BTW the Tea-Partiers are trying to act just like the Italian & German fascists/Nazis of the 1920's with their vandalistic attacks on Democratic Congressional office. Wish this would stop--they might get a bit more respect from folks like me if they restored civility to their opposition.

question to jones:
"Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?"

answer:
JONES:"Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level."

so the trend is positive (i.e. it's getting hotter), but just barely short of being "statistically significant".

he explains further:
JONES:"Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods."

so, the problem here is it's TOO SHORT OF A PERIOD for "statistical significance" to be "likely".

if you consider a longer time period, say 1975 to present, or even 1975 to 1998 there IS statistically significant warming.

and here's the disappointing, but not surprising, part of the article about the interview. the article says ("admits"?!) that 1975 to 1998 shows warming, but misinforms us:

"He [jones]...said these could be explained by natural phenomena...."

jones DID NOT say that! what he ACTUALLY said was, that to the best of his knowledge "natural phenomena" from 1975 to 1998 should have produced COOLING, BUT DIDN'T:

jones, from the actual interview:"This area is slightly outside my area of expertise. When considering changes over this period we need to consider all possible factors (so human and natural influences as well as natural internal variability of the climate system). Natural influences (from volcanoes and the Sun) over this period could have contributed to the change over this period. Volcanic influences from the two large eruptions (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991) would exert a negative influence. Solar influence was about flat over this period. Combining only these two natural influences, therefore, WE MIGHT HAVE EXPECTED SOME COOLING DURING THIS PERIOD." (SHOUTING mine... ;-) )

now, you can nit pick and say, well, he's only considering two factors, there may be others. but that's not the point. my point here is that your article about the interview said that jones said something he DID NOT SAY.

samdman95, your take on Mr Q is exactly part of the problem. Instead of presenting a counter arguement, other analysis, or data, you take the route of arrogance and simply dismiss his posts out of hand.

Don't take this to be that I necessarily believe everything Mr Q posts...but if anyone is to learn anything, it would seem to me that we need to be willing to take a critical look and weigh the merits and debate the subject. Telling people to shut up and go away is simply not productive.

As I said above, in Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina, temperatures have been warmer in the past (usually during the 1920s to 1940s). But the graphics shared by Andrew paint the picture that those areas are much warmer than they've ever been.

Is that an indictment of the graphics Andrew has shared? Not at all, but I think it should call into question not only the data used but the baseline chosen as well. Essentially, Andrew's post presents us with four data points and asks us to draw a conclusion. That's not possible.

NASA/NOAA have been totally discredited as sources for global warming. It's all politics and budgets to them. Record cold all through the northern hemisphere, and they want to say record heat? Yeah, right.

ANd hottest year since when? I didn't realise NASA kept records back in the 1500s. Or even 1950s.

@nlcaldwell: The NOAA charts you link to are the mean temperature records, while the maps that Andrew posted show temperature anomalies, i.e., record-setting events. Also, the NOAA charts carry a disclaimer that the displayed data are not official and have not been quality controlled. The data in the NASA report have been quality controlled.

@nlcaldwell: The NOAA charts you link to are the mean temperature records, while the maps that Andrew posted show temperature anomalies, i.e., record-setting events. Also, the NOAA charts carry a disclaimer that the displayed data are not official and have not been quality controlled. The data in the NASA report have been quality controlled.

@nlcaldwell: The NOAA charts you link to are the mean temperature records, while the maps that Andrew posted show temperature anomalies, i.e., record-setting events. Also, the NOAA charts carry a disclaimer that the displayed data are not official and have not been quality controlled. The data in the NASA report have been quality controlled.

Wow Bombo47jea- you seem like a reasonable person, but you might want to reconsider that post. Please-- PLease try to separate politics from the science of this issue. If the science can survive the criticism, then the politics will follow.

Hi spgass1, you are right it wasn't especially cold. I would call it "cool" since the snow suppressed highs and the extra moisture kept it a bit milder at night. Unlike previous years, the Shenandoah South Fork did not freeze at my house. The Potomac froze in DC, but perhaps more as an effect of 2-3 inch/hour snow.

Walter, the interesting thing to me is when I see articles about ocean heat storage (e.g. the Argo measurements) that say there has been deep ocean warming for 6 years. Six whole years! And we skeptics are not allowed to talk about lack of satellite measured warming for a bit longer period of time? It would be nice to see some consistency about the statistical significance of periods of time, but I suspect it is selected for convenience not from principle.

it's that some people had been saying that there *cannot be* global warming since the oceans had not been warming since 2004 (at least, the upper 700 meters, which used to be the standard depth before Argo):http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

Now that they have analyzed the Argo data down to 2000m (in 2009 papers), we see that the ocean *has* been warming, just as expected.
They don't have 2000m data back to 1955 like they do 700m data, but for the time they do have it, it shows the oceans continue to accumulate heat from the CO2 forcing, even when the upper 700m layer does a lot of vertical mixing with deeper water and does not get warmer itself. This kills the "oceans have been cooling since 2004, thus global warming is a hoax" argument.

As for "extrapolating Greenland stations", you are missing the fact that GISS now uses NOAA satellite data for Arctic temperatures, and much of the oceans. That old technique was a way to guesstimate Arctic temperatures before the satellite era. CRU, by the way, just ignores areas it cannot directly measure, and gives it, in effect, the global average temperature anomaly. They just report what they see - GISS tried to make an educated guess about what they couldn't see (back then), since they were modelling the entire planet.

Why would you support the use of satellites where they can't measure temperature adequately (greater than about 80 degrees latitude) but not the rest of the globe where satellite is obviously more accurate?

Answer: because much warming (and some cooling) comes from islands extrapolated to nearby oceans. "Much" of the oceans might still come from satellites as you suggest, but "too much" comes from island airports extended for hundreds of miles into the ocean. The Antarctic suffers from the same bias, GISS takes satellite measurements, then warms them using biased ground measurements.

eric,
i don't think 6 yrs is long enough to be "statistically significant" - that's crazy. and, it is of course what makes those "no warming since 1990-something" claims silly, if not misleading. there's a great statistician on the web called "tamino". he talks a lot about trends and cycles and so on as relates to global warming. have you read him? funny and smart...

earlier we talked about upper/lower bounds, remember? who knows? there's a lot of thermal mass in the oceans. they're deep...and wide... maybe that's a regulator?

Below is a direct quote from an email written by Reto Ruedy (a NASA GISS employee). The first "He" is a reference to Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit

Mr. Ruedy is paraphrasing what James Hansen had written to Andrew Revkin of the dot earth blog. See page numbers 36 and 37 of this pdf.

--begin quote--
He concentrates on US time series which (US covering less than 2% of the world) is so noisy and has such a large margin of error that no conclusions can be drawn from it at this point;
--end quote

Please go back and read that a second time and allow it to sink in.

Mr. Ruedy said that the United States temperature record is "so noisy and has such a large margin of error that no conclusions can be drawn from it at this point".

I would like to see that little tidbit included as a footnote on all NASA GISS graphics. Wouldn't that be nice?

If the United States temperature record is "so noisy and has such a large margin of error that no conclusions can be drawn from it at this point", whose temperature record are we to believe is better than ours, and has less noise than ours, and therefore has a smaller margin of error than ours, and ALSO shows significant warming?

Perhaps we should stop calling it global warming and start calling it "someplace other than the United States warming".

Hmmm.... I like it. I think I shall adopt it. From now on I will refer to AGW as "catastrophic, man made, someplace other than the United States warming".

@amaranthpa Trust me I have tried to argue with him but he is too stubborn, and I've realized its not worth my time. In addition, I know that he will deny golbal warming until the whole world is flooded and I wont change his mind. What I am saying is that I wonder why he posts here because he should have someting more important to do than maikng false conclusions from anecdotal evidence. It's like someone taking 100 three point shots and making two and showing his freinds just those two, and saying therefore he is good at shooting threes. Mr. Q has exceptions that he thinks are the rule, while NASA, Andrew, and almost everyone willing to look at ALL the facts knows that they are exceptions to the rule that global warming does exist.

HerodotusJr, as luck would have it, Willis Eschenbach posted a thread today where he claims (in a post in the thread) that GISS does NOT use satellite data for the Arctic Ocean. See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/25/gisscapades/ If you believe Willis is wrong, please post a link, otherwise my prior post of extrapolating warm Greenland stations up to the arctic is assumed to be correct.

Basically I agree with Willis that the arctic should be white in the picture above, not deep red-black, because there is no data.

samdman95 wrote, "@amaranthpa Trust me I have tried to argue with him but he is too stubborn, and I've realized its not worth my time."

Not unless you have been debating me under a different name.

I searched and I only found three other comments by you, samdman95, directed at me. I will list all three below, with links, and allow everyone to see how well you presented your argument.

--begin quote--
Holy moley and Mr. Q, you're right. its cold. global warming doesnt exist. Its a liberal lie to get us all to let the socialist muslim president take over the world while good people like sarah palin lose their jobs.
--end quote--

--begin quote--
saying someone believes in global warming is like saying you believe in evolution, it is a fact. calm down and enjoy the snow. I love CWG and while i dont normally read the posts about global warming, it is a serious problem, but should stay off this site. HolyMoley and Mr. Q, please go back to commenting on foxnews, not on this great WEATHER site!
--end quote--

Add to that today's spectacular foray into the debating arena, and you have commented to me, by name, a total of four glorious times.

I think reasonable people will understand why I failed to respond to you. But I did appreciate today's comment. It gave me a good laugh. I was tempted to point out the obvious self-contradictory nature of it, but decided it wasn't worth it.

El Nino is not like putting another log on the fire. It is a release of heat, not an accumulation.

La Nina is a recharging of the ocean heat. Global surface temperatures do not fall during La Nina, they rise.

This El Nino is till nowhere near 1998 (in fact is a Modaki El Nino), however considering GISS completely makes up Arctic temperature, it wouldn't be surprising to see their "global" 2010 record exceed 1998.

This emanates from Jim Hansen's Dept., so there's no surprise to be honest. I cannot believe that this is what has become of NASA. Here they are, scrapping their entire Constellation Program designed for Manned Space Exploration, in favor of what, Climatological reports focusing on AGW? Excuse me, but this is NOAA's realm, not NASA's. Get NASA back-on-track with exploring the Heavens above, and away from this garbage for once-and-for all.

Btw, I went to the Hansen's domain, the GISS (The Goddard Institute for Space Studies), and EVERY single article talks about "Carbon", "Warming", and "Melting Ice". This has NOTHING to do with "Space Studies" AT ALL! I love how these activist hacks have completely turned NASA into a whimpering step-child of its former self, and it utterly disgusts me to no end. They might as well change the name of GISS, to LIES (The Leftist Institute for Earth/Environmental Studies). Yes, I use the term "Leftist" here, because that is what Hansen is, a conniving self-righteous activist. Placing Robert Goddard's name upon such a disgrace, is blasphemy of the highest order.

@seraphina: The disclaimer reads on NOAA reads that "Some of the following data are preliminary and have not been quality controlled.". I take that to mean that recent data may not be quality controlled, but data going back more than a few years probably is. Yet, I could be wrong. Unfortunately, the disclaimer doesn't explain what it means by "Some of the following data...".

In any case, it's interesting to see the recovery of the polar ice cap continue. According to the NSIDC's website, polar ice is currently within two standard deviations of the mean for what I think is the first time in a number of years. No matter what side you fall on, that should be encouraging news.

@eric654: March 25, 2010 9:46 PM
Assume whatever you want - your opinions will not be considered by global leaders anytime soon.

If you want to improve your opinions, just for fun, take a look at this:http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/gistemp.html
You can read where GISS gets its ocean temperatures from. Follow the links, and you find it is NOAA polar orbiting satellites. The Arctic Ocean has been observed by such satellites since 1979.
Learn from the sources, not from some unknown guy at a blog.

If you have evidence that GISS still uses it's pre-satellite era methodology, please post a link, or else I will assume you have realized your error. Remember, Dr. Hansen has been doing these studies going on 4 decades, so don't give me some paper from 1983 or some article from the 70's.

@TheAnalyst | March 25, 2010 11:05 PM
Thank you for your irrelevant rant, and ideas about what "space studies" should mean.

In case you've never actually heard of the Earth Sciences Division of NASA GSFC, here is their mission:

...plans, organizes, evaluates, and implements a broad program of research on our planet's natural systems and processes. Major focus areas include climate change, severe weather, the atmosphere, the oceans, sea ice and glaciers, and the land surface.

To study the planet from the unique perspective of space, the Earth Science Division develops and operates remote-sensing satellites and instruments. We analyze observational data from these spacecraft and make it available to the world's scientists. Our Education and Public Outreach efforts raise public awareness of the the Division's research and its benefits to society.http://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/index.cfm?fuseAction=home.main&&navOrgCode=610

HerodotusJr wrote, "You can read where GISS gets its ocean temperatures from. Follow the links, and you find it is NOAA polar orbiting satellites. The Arctic Ocean has been observed by such satellites since 1979."

I followed your link, and I read the entire page twice, but I couldn't find anything that even indicated that Arctic temperatures were used, much less their source.

Could you please double check the link. If the link is correct, would you be so kind as to post the applicable text? Thank you.

But I did find that link absolutely fascinating. I discovered that there is over 100 years worth of CRU data being used by NASA. I guess their data set isn't independent of Hadley after all.

Hi Mr Q, I suspect HerodotusJr is talking out of his hat. I am going with Willis Eschenbach on this one until someone shows otherwise on his thread (WUWT like above).

HerodotusJr, you have it backwards. You should be convincing me why I should care what "global leaders" think. You provided no link to GISS Arctic satellite use. If you have an argument for that, why don't you take it up with Willis on the thread I linked above.

HerodotusJr,
you said an earlier post of yours was "swallowed" by this page. i seriously doubt it was censored. was it a really long post? this page will only accept posts up to a certain length. unless it contained profanity, i suspect it was "held" for being too long.

if i'm writing a long post, i've learned to "copy" the entire thing before posting it in case that "comment being held" notice come up. if it does come up, you can break the post into two/three parts.

It is unfortunate that practices at CRU, GISS, etc. have produced such confusion as is evident in many of the above posts. I am a post-doctoral researcher in Quaternary Studies, not of recent climate, so my knowledge lies before the modern era. Just to keep the instrumental (50-150 y) record in perspective, I would like to remind the readers that once one takes a longer-term view, various phases of 20th Century warming are in no way different in scale and temporal expression from those reconstructed via multi-proxy over the past 7000 years (about beginning of Holocene climate instability). It is unfortunate that a lack of clarity in the recent, instrumental record also restricts the usefulness of proxy data and a proper 'calibration' of these proxies.

From the point-of-view of the modern record, there are obviously highly intelligent people making posts here, the reliability of which are comprimised, however, by failure at the core data-repository level. Relatively untrained skeptics could never have gotten the better of trained pofessionals without some, key professionals FIRST weakening their own integrity in pursuit of false-verification of weak hypotheses like AGW. Although the AGW hypothesis might be affirmed or disproved in the future, the nature of the present debate certainly reflects upon major cliamte data quality problems, a lack of honesty, and even real curiosity on the part of many climate scientists.

But HerodotusJr is completely wrong about the Reynolds data covering the Arctic. It does not. It covers the area between 60 degrees North and 60 degrees South. Follow the links I provided, read those, and read the pdf if you doubt me.

So it would appear that Joe Bastardi's and Willis Eschenbach's criticism is accurate and fair.

Mr. Q.

PS. What is interesting is the description of their "adjusting" the satellite data based upon the SST measurements taken by ship. Read the pdf that I linked to.

bmalbert1 wrote, "Relatively untrained skeptics could never have gotten the better of trained pofessionals without some, key professionals FIRST weakening their own integrity in pursuit of false-verification of weak hypotheses like AGW. Although the AGW hypothesis might be affirmed or disproved in the future, the nature of the present debate certainly reflects upon major cliamte data quality problems, a lack of honesty, and even real curiosity on the part of many climate scientists."

bmalbert1,
i think just about everyone knows the climate has been much warmer and much colder in the past than it is now. the difference is that the current warming is accompanied by a HUGE release of man-made co2. now, it could be pure coincidence...there could be problems with the temp record...or all that man-made co2 (which nobody disputes is a greenhouse gas) might have something to do with it.

Thus the term "weak hypothesis" above. The atmospheric physical data needs to be a lot better for AGW to be viewed as an urgent problem (SEE BELOW). Thus-far, indications are that IPCC have greatly over-stated the positive feedbacks of CO2 in the greenhouse effect. Until the true factors are resolved, even the problems of the recent temp. data will remain a secondary issue for AGW (although also still v. important for purposes beyond AGW-related issues, that is another reason for concern re. scientific integrity). In terms of policy, I do not think a 'better safe than sorry' stance is fully justified, as one should remember that proposed CO2 caps also have a major human cost beyond mere industry profits with respect to cost of living for the world's poor. This is my main reason for caution re. things AGW.

Thanks for your suggestions.
No, there was no profanity - I think it might have timed out or something, because I started the comment, and was interrupted for a few hours. Or perhaps it was because it had 3 URL's in it. I don't think it was too many characters.

Either way, yes, I had a copy and tried to repost it later - same message.

The message still has not been posted.
So much for "held for approval by the blog owner". I'm sure it's just some automatic Comment program that choked on a keyword or URL limit or something...

well, over the winter, CWG offered one of my favorite posts ever. they claimed that the recent (i.e., record-breaking snow) winter in washington was "consistent with" AGW. if that's the case, i'm all for AGW.....

bmalbert1,
and when i say that (how to deal with it) i'm totally serious. scientists have spent so much effort conveying the "it's warming" message (in the face of "my co2 emissions couldn't possibly warm the giant earth's climate") that they haven't spent much intellectual capital on "what happens now".

Here's a paper analyzing the Advanced Very High Resolution (AVHRR) Polar Pathfinder (APP) data set for just the Arctic Ocean and surrounding land areas:http://tinyurl.com/ybo8stm

Here's a different use of the Pathfinder data:http://tinyurl.com/y9zn8r5
Spatial coordinates - click it to "view more". For this non-Hurricane Center, interested in the Poles, they look at -54 deg S to -90 S, and 48 deg N to 90 deg N. Another subset of the NOAA satellite derived data.

"I am going with Willis Eschenbach on this one"
Sure, why not throw your lot in with a retired construction worker who lives on the coast of Fiji? I'm sure his denying that the oceans will be rising and the planet is warming is not wishful thinking or anything...

Good choice for the mentally lazy. Have another donut, and watch TV.

HerodotusJr, you have it backwards. You should be convincing me why I should care what "global leaders" think.
Lol

You know, one thing you have to be really careful about when you decide to go all snarky is that you must be 100% correct with your facts. Because you can look really silly if you go all snarky and it is you who has your facts wrong.

I will take it from the top. You wrote, "If you want to improve your opinions, just for fun, take a look at this:http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/gistemp.html
You can read where GISS gets its ocean temperatures from. Follow the links, and you find it is NOAA polar orbiting satellites."

If you would have taken your own advice and "take[n] a look" at your own link, and "Follow the links" you find there, you would have found this README located in that ftp directory. Where they specifically write -
--begin quote--
Description of the OI.v2 Monthly SST Analysis (v2 indicates version 2)

... snipped for brevity ...

The NOAA OI.v2 SST monthly fields are derived by a linear interpolation of
the weekly optimum interpolation (OI) version 2 fields to daily fields then
averaging the daily values over a month. The monthly fields are in the
same format and spatial resolution as the weekly fields.

The OI sea surface temperature (SST) analysis is produced weekly on a
one-degree grid. The analysis uses in situ and satellite SST's plus SST's
simulated by sea-ice cover. Before the analysis is computed, the satellite
data is adjusted for biases using the method of Reynolds (1988) and
Reynolds and Marsico (1993).

The OI.v2 analysis is described in Reynolds, R.W., N.A. Rayner, T.M.
Smith, D.C. Stokes, and W. Wang, 2002: An Improved In Situ and Satellite
SST Analysis for Climate, J. Climate, Vol 15. The paper is available in
Adobe Acrobat in the directory:

I discovered that there is over 100 years worth of CRU data being used by NASA.

You know, one thing you have to be really careful about when you decide to go all snarky is that you must be 100% correct with your facts. Because you can look really silly if you go all snarky and it is you who has your facts wrong.

Like confusing the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia with the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research ?
HadISST is different from HadCRUT3.http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadisst/

I'm trying to just give you hints, so you will read stuff and figure things out for yourself. Why are you so certain that after 30 minutes reading, you now know what's going on ?
Some problems are 30 minute problems. Some are 10 hours. Some are 5 year problems. Don't make the mistake of thinking a 1 hour blog read allows you to understand difficult concepts.

The ice field shows the approximate monthly average of the ice concentration values input to the SST analysis. Ice concentration is stored as the percentage of area covered. For the ice fields, the value 122 represents land or coast. Note, the ice land mask is a function of the ice analysis and may change periodically.

The sst and ice fields are on a 1-degree (360 lon by 180 lat) grid. The first gridbox of each array is centered on 0.5E, 89.5S. The points move eastward to 359.5E, then northward to 89.5N.

Does that sound like 60°S to 60°N coverage to you ?
Don't just cite papers, read them.
Which takes a lot longer than 30 minutes.

And go look at those polar NOAA satellites which I gave you links for. After a few days, see if you still think Reynolds throws away all the data north of 60°N and south of 60°S.

I phrased that poorly. I should have said that NASA GISS doesn't use all of Reynolds.

I was really hoping that you would take the time to read OI SST v1 & v2, but it doesn't appear that you will.

If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, I can point you to the good stuff. Reynolds calculates ice concentration because ice concentration is used in their algorithm to determine SST. Salt water which is 90% or more ice is automatically set at -1.8 degrees C. Fresh water which is 90% or more ice is automatically set at 0 degrees C. See pdf page number 8 of OI SST v2.

Now that you are armed with this knowledge, take a closer look at that last png link you provided. Notice the white color represents -0.5 C to +0.5 C anomaly? Notice where all of the white is?

Since it is sea ice (greater than 90% concentration) the Reynolds algorithm automatically assigns it the temperature of -1.8 degrees C. The only way to achieve a change in temperature (for the areas of 90% or greater ice concentration) is for a reduction is ice concentration. If there is no reduction ice concentration, there is no change in SST. No change in SST results in an anomaly of 0.

Now you understand the reason for all of the white on your png graphic, located quite coincidentally, north of 60 degrees and south of 60 degrees. ;)

Now let's take what we know about the Reynold's algorithm, and your graphic, and compare that to the bottom right graphic up at the top of this page. The one that Andrew provided. For the 2000's, NASA GISS shows a +2.3 degrees C anomaly for all of the Arctic, and a positive anomaly for a good deal of the Antarctic.

Do you want me to believe that there was no part of the Arctic that retained at least 90% ice concentration? Similarly, do you want me to believe that such a huge swath of the Antarctic also dropped below 90% ice concentration? Obviously, that hasn't happened. So how do you explain it?

The only possible explanation is that NASA GISS does not use all of Reynolds OI SST v2. The only question is where do they stop using the Reynolds data.

Which puts us right back to the NOAA NHC site, which states,

--begin quote--
A real-time global sea surface temperature (SST) analysis has been developed by Richard Reynolds from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). Also, a monthly one-degree global SST climatology was constructed using these analyses by the Climate Prediction Center (CPC/NOAA). This climatology derived from monthly Optimum Interpolation (OIv2) SST analyses with an adjusted base period of 1971-2000 was used in computing the SST anomaly field using a weighted monthly mean climatology and the current observed Reynolds SST field. The actual areal coverage of the analysis and the anomally data is roughly between 60°S and 60°N globally. These analyses were based on ship and buoy SST data supplemented with satellite SST retrievals. The one degree climatology and analyses resolve equatorial upwelling and fronts.
--end quote--

The Reynolds et al. OI SST measurements and algorithm focuses solely on areas of water. It specifically excludes areas where there is land. Antarctica consumes most of the area south of 66 degrees latitude. That places most of the area south of 66 degrees latitude outside the Reynolds et al. OI SST temperature measurements/scope.

Do you still take issue with NOAA NHC's description of Reynolds OIv2 as -
--begin quote--The actual areal coverage of the analysis and the anomally data is roughly between 60°S and 60°N globally.
--end quote--

Notice all of the grey? It doesn't appear to be using any of Reynolds OIv2 sea surface temperatures. Notice how much grey there is in Canada and Greenland. Notice how much grey there is for the entire Arctic area.

Now here is the exact same NASA GISS surface temperature anomaly map where the "fill in/smoothing" radius has been extended to 1200 km.

The difference is breath taking, isn't it?

It is amazing what a difference extending that "fill in/smoothing" radius out to 1200 km makes.

But even on that map, the Atlantic and Pacific have large areas of grey, or missing data. It would appear again that Reynolds OIv2 is not being used all.

Compare that second map, the 1200 km smoothing radius map, to the graphic that Mr. Freedman shows above at the beginning of the article. And then compare it to the graphic that you linked to. Which graphic bears the closest resemblance to the graphic that Mr. Freedman used? The graphic with the 1200 km smoothing radius (where it appears that Reynolds OIv2 isn't used at all - just GISS magic math), or the NOAA graphic from Reynolds OIv2 that you provided?

I admit to confusing the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (and their HadCRU series of products) with the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (and their HadISST product). My mistake. Good catch on your part.

I think I have proven that the great majority of the warming depicted on that NASA GISS colorful graphic is the byproduct of NASA GISS magic math and not satellite measurements. However, even if it weren't, just because there might be some warming, that doesn't mean that man is to blame for it. I think that critically important point/distinction often gets lost in the debate. People end up confusing global warming with catastrophic, man made global warming. The real issues are the catastrophic and man made parts of the equation.

We skeptics are often to blame because we fail to constantly state the distinction between global warming and catastrophic, man made, global warming (aka AGW). Or, according to Hansen and Ruedy of NASA GISS, catastrophic, man made, someplace other than the United States warming.

As I have posted before, resorting to cheap shots in a spirited debate usually means that the cheapshot artists' know that they are losing in the debate...

Also, IMKO, I think everyone here is looking at the small picture (data gathered from 100 years). It is in agreement by all scientists that the earth is roughly 4 Billion years old - and it was really, really hot then. The earth is constantly evolving and there is nothing we can do about it...(that doesn't mean run out and buy a HumVee and litter everywhere you go)!!